That power is [the same as] the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead… because of his great love for us, God made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved.
It was a Monday afternoon, and I was in our church’s staff meeting. Not a time we’d expect something extraordinary to happen. The view down the street looked the same as always – out to sea, as it happened, because this was the church I served in Bournemouth.
Just then, from nowhere, there was a deafening BOOM. Car alarms went off along the road. We rushed to the window. What had happened? It wasn’t until later that day that we found out. Across the bay, a 1,000lb bomb from World War Two had been found in an area of sand dunes. The area had been cleared and it had been detonated. We had just heard the sound of World War Two, decades later.
What Paul is telling his readers in Ephesus in the verses at the top of this post is that they could know the power of Jesus’ resurrection, even decades (and in our case, centuries) later. The Apostle is praying for his readers to know God’s incomparably great power for us who believe. He tells them this is the power that raised Christ from the dead (the words the same as, in brackets above, are the translators’ interpolation, but they capture the sense). God’s resurrection power may be experienced today.
But where? We might think that the Apostle has in mind some spectacular signs and wonders. That’s not the example he gives. Rather, he takes his readers down memory lane, to their own conversions. They had been dead in transgressions and sins: a picture of hopelessness and helplessness. But God made them alive in Christ.
This is what theologians call regeneration, memorably described in my copy of The New Bible Dictionary as a drastic act on fallen human nature by the Holy Spirit, leading to a change in a person’s whole outlook.
The Bible uses different metaphors for this: one of them is the new birth, but here, life from the dead. As Charles Wesley put it, “He speaks, and listening to His voice, new life the dead receive”.
Every time a person becomes a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re hearing an echo of His resurrection: the same power bringing that person to spiritual life.
This truth is not so often heard, I think because we fail to recognise our helplessness if left to ourselves. It takes a miracle of God to change us.
We’ll be thinking more about regeneration as we continue our series on 1 Peter this Sunday.
